Nora Roberts: Rules of the Game

"Brooke."

"You're the most important thing in my life." She turned to him then, taking deep breaths to keep the tears back. "I don't expect you to believe that after the way I behaved, but it's true. I couldn't let go of the house, the things, because I'd waited so long to have them. I needed the identity they gave me." Because the words were painful, she swallowed. "For so long everything I had was only mine on loan. All I could think of was that if I didn't keep that house, those things, I'd be lost again. I don't expect you to understand-''

"I will understand." He took her face in his hands. "If you'll let me."

She let out a long, shuddering breath. ''I never belonged anywhere, to anyone. Ever. It makes you afraid to trust. I always told myself that there'd be a day when I'd have my own things, my own place-I wouldn't have to share them, I wouldn't have to ask. It was something I promised myself because I couldn't have survived without that one hope. I forgot to let go of that when I didn't need it anymore."

"Maybe." He stroked a thumb over her cheek. "Or maybe you had without realizing it. Back there, you called it our home."

"Parks." She reached up to place her hands on him. "I don't care if the house is gone, if everything in it's gone. I have everything I need, everything I love, right here in my hands."

They were wet, filthy, exhausted. Alive. Parks looked at her blackened face and matted hair, the red rimmed eyes. She'd never looked more beautiful to him. Throats raw from smoke, eyes stinging, he reached for her. Together, they fell to the grass. Brooke was laughing and weeping as he kissed her. Her face was streaked with soot and tears, but his lips raced wildly over it. Passion met passion. Bruises were unfelt as they touched each other while a need, as volatile as the fire they had challenged, raged through them. When the tatters of her robe were gone, his sodden clothes joined it, they lay tangled, naked on the grass. Again and again, their mouths clung, drawing the strength and victory of die moment from each other, climbing beyond the smoke and stench of the fire left behind to a clean, bright world.

She knew she had never been so aware, so stunningly alive. Her body seemed to hum from a thousand pulses that grew more erratic as he touched her.

With her arms tight around him, his body pressed against hers, she felt the sensation of absolute trust.

He would protect, she would defend, against any outside forces that threatened. During the fire, they had ceased to be a man and a woman. They had become a unit. Somewhere beneath the swirling passion, Brooke felt peace. She had found her own.

They made love while the smoke broke into mists above their heads. And when they were spent, they clung still, unwilling to break the unity so newly discovered. "You've hurt yourself," Parks murmured, touching a bruise on her shoulder.

"I don't feel hurt." She buried her lips at his throat and knew she would never forget the smell of smoke and ash and loving. "I hit you."

"Yeah, I noticed."

Hearing the grin in his voice, she closed her eyes. "You were only thinking of me. I'm sorry."

"Now you're thinking of us." He pressed his lips to her temple. "I'm glad."

"We won," she whispered.

Parks lifted his head to look down at her. Taking his thumb, he rubbed a streak of soot from her skin. It was the color of her eyes, he thought, seeing it on his own flesh. "We won, Brooke."

"Everything."

His lips curved before he brought them down to hers. "Everything."

She cradled his head on her shoulder, gently stroking his hair. Tiny pieces of ash continued to float above her like memories. "I said once I didn't want anything to change… I was afraid to let it change. I was wrong." Closing her eyes, she let herself absorb his closeness. "It's not quite the same now."

"Better," he murmured. "It makes a difference.

It'll always make a difference."

She sighed, knowing the contentment she had always searched for was irrevocably bound up in one man, one love. "But we'll still play the game, won't we?"

This time when he lifted his head, he grinned. Brooke's lips curved in response. "By our own rules."